Research Associate

Department
The School of Physics, Engineering and Technology brings physicists and engineers together to push the frontiers of knowledge, foster innovation and meet the grand challenges facing society. Our aim is to deliver world-leading research in both fundamental and applied areas whilst developing new technologies that work for the public good, in an environment where everyone can thrive.

As a School, equality, diversity, and inclusion are central to our culture and we strive to provide a working environment which allows all staff and students to contribute fully, to flourish, and to excel. We aim to ensure that there is a supportive and egalitarian culture at all levels and across all staff groups and offer a range of family friendly, inclusive employment policies, flexible working arrangements, staff engagement forums, campus facilities and services to support staff from different backgrounds. We are proud to hold Juno Champion and Athena Swan silver awards, which recognise our commitment to creating an equitable and fully inclusive environment in which staff and students can thrive. We aim to inspire young people to engage with science and engineering through our outreach work.

We are seeking a Research Associate to work on a new project entitled “Atomistic understanding of extended defects in reduced tungsten oxide to guide the optimisation of properties for energy applications”. This project has recently received funding from EPSRC as part of a call for proposals on UK-Japan collaboration in advanced materials.

The aim of this project is to understand the atomic structure, electronic and thermal (phononic) properties of reduced tungsten oxides by combining first principles materials modelling methods with complementary scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM).

Role
Your role at York will be to model the structure and properties of extended defects in tungsten oxides using first principles methods working closely with our experimental collaborators based in Japan. The collaborators in this project include the group of Prof Ikuhara (University of Tokyo) who specialise in the application of scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) to understand crystal defects and the group of Prof Hiromichi Ohta (Hokkaido University) who grow high-quality thin-films of functional oxides for thermoelectric, electronic and electrochemical applications. By combining our expertise and capabilities in a synergistic and tightly integrated manner we aim to uncover structure-property relationships at the atomic scale and identify design rules for optimising materials properties by defect and microstructure engineering.

Skills, Experience & Qualification needed
You will have:

• A PhD in Physics, Chemistry or related Physical Science.
• A track record of high-quality peer-reviewed publications.
• Knowledge of computational materials modelling and the underpinning physics/chemistry concepts to engage in high quality research.
• Proven ability to apply density functional theory methods (e.g., VASP, CP2K or similar) for predictive modelling of the structure and properties of materials.
• Excellent communications skills.
• While not essential, experience in theoretical modelling of surface or interface defects and/or calculation of the vibrational properties of materials would be an advantage.

Interview date: TBC

For informal enquiries: please contact Prof Keith McKenna (keith.mckenna@york.ac.uk) or pet-hr@york.ac.uk.

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